In UNIX-like operating systems, it is conventional to use a memory addressing scheme that has two address space mappings, a user space for user programs and a kernel space for operating system related processes. It is a feature of UNIX-like operating systems that input/output (I/O) operations generally result in data being copied between the user and kernel address spaces. This copying may have a detrimental effect on I/O performance. Embodiments of the present invention aim to minimize such copying, which is also referred to as a zero copy solution.